


Some Dream Not Made Up

by ALC_Punk



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix, Angst, Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-23
Updated: 2010-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALC_Punk/pseuds/ALC_Punk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during the Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix, Redd makes candles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Dream Not Made Up

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where the prompt for this originally came from, but the note on the piece of paper most of this was on said the prompt was "open flame". Amusingly, I don't think there's actually open flames in this story.

Candles are easy to make, even in the post-apocalyptic future. Redd (long ago she had to remind herself she was Redd here, repeating the name over and over until Jean was a distant memory and Redd was all she knew) teaches Nate to dip bits of twine in melted wax.

Over and over again, as they cool and he finally gets into the rhythm, knowing just _when_ to re-dip.

The herbs one of their fellow resistance members recommended, smell bitter at this stage. The cardamom and sage will burn more fragrantly than simple wax or tallow. Then again, everything smells bitter, harsh, where she is now. There's no apple pie or roses to delight the palette, only unwashed humans, the stench of the latrines, and worse.

Sometimes, Redd wonders if she ever lived in a time where carrion birds were an uncommon sight.

It's the cold that's worse, biting into her fingers in the deep night, making her shiver even when she's covered in more layers than she should need. When it goes from bad to worse, she puts her fingers against Slym, sliding them under his clothing, questing for his over-heated skin.

Redd had always heard that men gave off heat like appliances.

Even when asleep, he complains, his voice a murmur of slurred threats in amongst the other sounds around them, trickling in from the corridors of their refuge.

"You don't scare me," she'll whisper, pressing closer, her nose cold against the warmth of his neck.

If he's awake enough, in the mood, he'll laugh and roll, pinning her for an instant before they both work to warm her hands and body in a far more efficient way. Other times, he'll shift further away, trying to escape the chill in her skin.

Nathan has a thousand and one questions about wax and candles. How does it work, why do they need them with the electrical generators still working, can we make them different colors? The questions make her smile or laugh even as a quiet part of her feels uncertain at how easy she has come to love this child that wasn't hers. He could have been, with his clear eyes and his inquisitive mind, with the telepathy and telekinesis that so echo her own (when she had them, in another life).

He should have been given a normal life, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins who would love him. Redd can feel her hatred for his mother burn, sometimes, but it's always tempered with the memories, with the knowledge of Madelyne. She was never simply a mother out to destroy her son, and Redd wonders if that could have been her.

Once, she could have hated Nathan. She could have blamed him for his mother, for his father, for everything that had destroyed her own life. Now that idea seems ridiculous and more than a little selfish.

It would still be possible, here in this time, for siblings. But there's no guarantee that the child would be born whole and unharmed. There's still too much death in the air, too many chemicals that have already caused malformation and stillbirth in others. She and Slym are careful about things like timing and birth control. Bringing another child into such a place would be cruel.

Sometimes, she worries and drinks the tea that the women around her brew to protect against such eventualities. As much as Redd loves Nathan, she has no real idea if she truly wants a child of her own.

Slym does. He craves the connection and the chance to prove himself a better man than his father or the man Sinister twisted him into becoming. Redd watches him change as the time goes on, adjusting into fatherhood, letting Nathan get under his skin. It's enchanting and heartening and painful, all at once. Being able to raise this boy who will one day be the man they already know breaks her a little when she thinks about it.

A part of her wants to hide from Nathan, from Slym, to pretend this is a dream and there is no future where Apocalypse rules and an ancient sisterhood has fallen into crumbling nothingness, leaving the hopes of freedom shattered forever.

But she is adjusting to it, feeling the rhythm of this bleak future, feeling the hope that once imbued her a thousand trillion years before she knew Scott Summers' name. There is life here, there are people who live day in and day out, filled with laughter and going about their business with no care for the fate they could have had. Open markets, dusty bookstores, cold showers and thrice-turned clothing that would have been more suited to a rag bin than wearing, make up their lives.

And they thrive on it.

Once the candles are large enough, she and Nathan bundle them up for selling. There will always be those who prefer candles to un-trustworthy electricity and bulbs that break too easily. Redd keeps more than a few for their own use, knowing they may come in handy.

Letting Nate run through the market while she barters the candles for more wax and food doesn't worry her. He's safe here, with her ears pricked for his laughter and her eyes watching for shadows. It's not like running through a Nieman-Marcus, worried she's going to lose her charge in the midst of the Christmas displays. Nate knows not to stray too far. And even if he does, she can always find him again.

Basket of food (and more wax) on her arm, she collects him, laughing as he asks about the wax, wanting colors to add this time and pouting when she tells him it's too much of an extravagance. She secrets the little box of crayons she found, hoping the wax will melt evenly enough.

Their return is heralded by Slym as some ridiculously momentous occasion, but she laughs as he swings Nate into the air, the little boy shrieking with laughter. Moments like this, she wants to wrap in amber and store forever. She doesn't know why she worries about it, not until she wakes in the night, her blood feeling like ice and the echoes of a different life crowding her mind.

_He is my son..._ the memories tell her, the fractured mind of one, two, three others turning and twisting around her as Redd struggles to remain herself.

Getting out helps. Climbing the crumbling brickwork and pacing the slowly sagging tops of the walls until she's panting from exertion gives her focus. Standing under the stars that haven't appeared to change in two thousand years (she thinks they should, but she's no astronomer), she feels the memories shift again, growing quieter until the only person left is Redd.

Somewhere, Jean Grey is waiting to become herself again. Someday, she will. Until then, she will allow Redd her stars and her son, her Slym and her fight against Apocalypse.

There are always candles to make.


End file.
